Everything confirmed it.  He saw the suffering by which mother and daughters were yoked.  He noted the insufficient food, the thin clothing, the wan cheeks, the languid tread.  He no longer took these for granted, but looked into their causes.  And the Rector’s blindness to them, or indifference, became a terror to him—­a thing inhuman.

He began to think him mad.  Worse, he began to hate him:  he, Johnny Whitelamb, who had taken everything at his hands—­food, clothing, knowledge, even his faith in God!  He accused himself for a monster of ingratitude, whose sins invited the sky to fall and blot him out.  And still he could not meet Molly’s eyes; still, in spite of checks and set-backs, the doubt grew.

It was almost at its worst one morning in late August, when the Rector invited him to lay by his drawings and walk beside him as far as Froddingham, where he had business to transact. (It was to pay over 5 pounds, and meet a note given by him in the spring to keep Charles in pocket-money.) Had Johnny been in a more charitable mood, the accent in which the old man proffered the invitation would have struck him as pathetic.  For the Rector it was indeed a rare confession of weakness.  But three weeks before his purblind nag Mettle had stumbled, flung him, trailed him a few yards on the ground with one foot in the stirrup, and come to a standstill with one hoof planted blunderingly on his other foot.  It had been a narrow escape, had caused him excruciating pain, and he limped still.  To walk, even with a stick, was impossible.  But the money must be paid at Froddingham and he would trust no messenger.  So he mounted the mare, Bounce, and set forth at a foot-pace, with Johnny striding alongside and noting how the white palsied hand shook on the rein.  Johnny noted it without pity:  for the doubt was awake and clamorous.  If ever he hated his benefactor, he hated him that morning.

The morning was gray, with a blusterous south-west wind of more than summer strength; and the floods had subsided, but the Trent, barely contained within its banks, was running down on a fierce ebb-tide.  They reached Althorpe, and while waiting for the horse-boat to cross to Burringham, Johnny found time to wonder at the force of two or three gusts which broke on the lapping water and drove it like white smoke against the bows of a black keel, wind-bound and anchored in mid-channel about fifty yards down-stream.

It turned out that the ferryman, who worked the horse-boat with his eldest son, had himself walked over to Bottesford earlier in the morning:  and Johnny felt some uneasiness at finding his place supplied by a boy scarcely fourteen.  Mr. Wesley, however, seemed in no apprehension, but coaxed Bounce to embark and stood with her amidships, holding her bridle, as the boat was pushed off.  Johnny took his seat, fronting the elder lad, who pulled the stern oar.

They started in a lull of the wind.  Johnny’s first thought of danger had never been definite, and he had forgotten it—­was busy in fact with the doubt—­when, half-way across, one of the white squalls swooped down on them and the youngster in the bows, instead of pulling for dear life, dropped his oar with a face of panic.